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February 12, 2012 8:00 PM

Grants spotlight

By Michelle Muņoz

Funding sets the course

$588M in NIH grants fuel the region's research

Where will the next scientific and medical discoveries come from? Follow the money.

The National Institutes of Health, part of the U.S. Department of Healthand Human Services, handed out grants worth more than $23.7 billion in 2011, and almost half a billion dollars landed in metro Detroit.

A wide variety of grants and awards comes out of the NIH and its 27 institutions and centers, each of which is focused on a different concentration, such as the National Cancer Institute.

The grants are given to organizations for research-related purposes, which can be training, construction, research and development or fellowships. And not all grants are given to researchers conducting experiments; some are given to support the ongoing research efforts of an organization.

Some of the awards are competitive, meaning they are standing awards that any institution can apply for. Some renew regularly and are only for one institution. Some are contracts, and some are agreements between NIH and the awarded organization.

Of the 1,539 NIH grants given to organizations in Michigan in 2011, together worth more than $655.4 million, 1,367 grants and $588 million went to Southeast Michigan.

Michigan is 11th on the list of states that received funding. California was first with more than $3.5 billion.

Tackling premature births

• Grant: $5.5 million • National Institutes of Health funding start: 10-year contract ending this year for a total of $125 million • Project leader: Roberto Romero, M.D., chief of the perinatology research branch at Hutzel Hospital, run by Wayne State University • Project: Service in support of perinatology research.

The perinatology research branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is one of only a few branches of the NIH outside Bethesda, Md.

The institute set out to tackle premature birth, and Detroit was a good place to do it, said Valerie Parisi, dean of the Wayne State University School of Medicine. African-American women are twice as likely as Caucasian women to have premature births.

Parisi said Detroit provided not only the expertise to study the problem but the high-risk population as well.

In 2011, the branch was the lead on an international study that could revolutionize the way pregnant women determined to be at-risk for pre-term birth due to a short cervix are treated. The study, led by Sonia Hassan, found that the risk of pre-term birth in women with a short cervix can be reduced by 45 percent with the use of a progesterone gel.

"It is my opinion that this is the most significant finding in obstetrics in the time I've been a physician, 35 years," Parisi said.

"This methodology is applicable all around the world, not just in Detroit."

The contract to house the perinatology research branch in Detroit ends Oct. 31, but Parisi said Wayne State will make a bid to keep the branch.

This study hopes to find a treatment to help improve the outcomes of pediatric cardiac arrest.

The trial is the first of its kind. Moler seeks to investigate the effectiveness of body cooling on infants and children who have gone into cardiac arrest. Body cooling is a proven treatment for adults in cardiac arrest or newborns who suffer lack of oxygen.

In 2002, studies were published suggesting that this therapeutic hypothermia could help adults suffering cardiac arrest, but Moler said pediatric cardiac arrest is much different than adult.

"It's paramount to find out if a similar strategy might improve children after cardiac arrest," he said.

More than 30 sites in the United States and Canada are participating in the study.

Unlike DNA mutations, which change the behavior of DNA permanently, epigenetic changes can be reversed. DNA mutations cause many things to happen in the body, including disease.

Epigenetics refer to the way in which genes express or don't express certain attributes. Project leader Kalantry said the study is an attempt to understand these changes so they may be used in new therapies.

"It turns out that we're gaining a better understanding of how genes are turned on and off in the life of an organism … as well as during diseases," Kalantry said.

Mutations to DNA can make the DNA behave in a certain way, but once the mutation is done it cannot be reversed.

These epigenetic changes can affect which genes are expressed and which are not expressed in a more flexible way.

"Epigenetic changes can last for a long time. They can maintain memory," Kalantry said. "There is no change in the DNA itself, yet the DNA remembers, the cell remembers that this DNA should be expressed and another piece should not be expressed."